The North New Guinea languages of

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

and

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

form a possible linkage of

Western Oceanic languages The Western Oceanic languages is a linkage of Oceanic languages, proposed and studied by . They make up a majority of the Austronesian languages spoken in New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papu ...

. They have been in heavy contact with

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...

Classification

According to Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002), the structure of the family is as follows: *? Sarmi–Jayapura family * Schouten linkage *

Huon Gulf Huon Gulf is a large gulf in eastern Papua New Guinea. It is bordered by Huon Peninsula in the north. Both are named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. Huon Gulf is a part of the Solomon Sea. Its northern boundary is marke ...

family * Ngero–Vitiaz linkage The center of dispersal was evidently near the

Vitiaz Strait Vitiaz Strait is a strait between New Britain and the Huon Peninsula, northern New Guinea. The Vitiaz Strait was so named by Nicholai Nicholaievich Mikluho-Maklai to commemorate the Russian corvette '' Vitiaz'' in which he sailed from Octob ...

between

New Britain New Britain () is the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of the Islands Region of Papua New Guinea. It is separated from New Guinea by a northwest corner of the Solomon Sea (or with an island hop of Umboi Island, Umboi the Dampie ...

and the New Guinea mainland. The inclusion of Sarmi and Jayapura Bay is uncertain, and it may constitute a separate branch of Western Oceanic.

References

* Ross, Malcolm (1988). ''Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia.'' Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. {{North New Guinea languages Western Oceanic languages Languages of Papua New Guinea Languages of Western New Guinea Papua (province) culture